TLP: Ahem, There Is a Way to Tell If He's a Real Teabagger

Thursday, March 11, 2010
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As if it wasn't enough that the Coffee Party is trying to steal their buzz, now the Tea Party faces the prospect that a U.S. Senate candidate running under their banner in Nevada is a phony.

Republicans are accusing Jon Scott Ashjian of being a fake teabagger, a plant to pull votes from the GOP, which is trying to unseat Democrat Harry Reid, the majority leader. Republican candidate Danny Tarkanian is one of the complainers and tells CNN, "Nobody in the Tea Party knows who he is. He didn't know any of the principles of the Tea Party."

Sue Lowden, the Republican front-runner in the Senate primary, according to recent polls, is the former Nevada Republican Party chair and seems to be the Republicans' best hope of unseating Reid in November. Or at least she did, until Ashjian got into the race.

Lowden says she's been very active with Tea Party groups in Nevada. "I am a Tea Party voter, absolutely." Which is why she says she finds it "a little strange" that Ashjian is emerging now. "I don't know who this person is. He's never been involved with anything that I'm aware of in this state."

What does it take to be a Tea Party member or candidate anyway? Isn't the whole point of the party that it's a populist movement? You know, come along and let's fuck with the political establishment, that kind of thing?

Reid denies all of it, mumbling something to CNN about "conspiratorialists" and Ashjian says he isn't anybody's bitch, least of all Harry Reid's. Or the Republicans, for that matter. "I don't think Republicans own the Tea Party," he told CNN. "In fact, I know they don't in Nevada, because I do."